Topics I've Started

Just bought some new front tyres for my Mk7, it has now done 18500 miles. I know that sounds a little low in mileage for new tyres, but as many of you know my car is used for driving tuition so of course it does alot of town driving and slow manouvers, so I am reasonable happy with this sought of mileage. They still have just over 2mm ish on them (1.6mm being the legal limit) but I not want to take them lower than that. The rear tyres still have 4.5mm - 5mm on them.

I have just ordered some Nankang NS-2 195/45 R16 84V RF with rim protection, these are a budget tyre but I know this tyre from previous cars in the past and have found them to be brill. Orderd them through Mytyres.com and are costing £57 each fitted, £114 for the pair fitted.

So thought you lot may be interested as my car is prob the highest mileage Mk7 on this site, and thought you might like to know what to expect in the future.

I am writing this guide in addition to my first guide to help others if they want to install a sub box into the Mk7 using a RCA convertor to create pre amps out.

Firstly I will add that this is not a simple job and I would not advise this to be done by a novice. How ever I hope my guide will make it easier for anyone trying to do the same. Also I will add for those that are screamish this does invole taking apart a 3 week old car, but absolutly no damage was done to my new little car.

So here we go.

Take out the front head unit, refer to my FIRST guide to do this. Once you have the head unit out you will have to disconnect two multi blocks from the rear of the unit, disconnect both and remove head unit to a safe place. The smaller multi block is just data cables. The connection you are interested in is the larger multiblock. When you look the block you will see 5 pairs of wires top n bottom plus a single cable on its own. The single cable on its own is the ignition live (only goes live when ignition is on). At the other end of the block you will see two fatter cables, the cable with black on it is the ground, and the other is the permannet live. The other eight cables which are a variety of colours are the speaker cables. The top row is the positive and bottom is negative.

Now take your RCA convertor on it you will have two positive speaker cables and two negative speaker cables. To avoid cutting cables you can push a bare end cable into the back of the multi blocks so push two positive into the top row and two positive into the bottom row. It is not important which speaker connection you use just as long as you use the same for both neg and pos. On your RCA convertor you will also have a positive and negative cable, again push the bare end cable from your RCA convertor into the appropriate neg and pos connection on the multi block. Now with your ampilifier kit you will be supplied with a long blue remote live cable, this cable is pushed into the back of the ignition live cable (the single cable on the multi block), this will mean your amp will on go on when your ignition is on.

Next you will have to feed your RCA cables, (supplied with your amp), your blue remote cable and your power cable to the rear of the car. First tie off your RCA cable and remote cable to something at the head unit so you dont pull them through.

It is fairly easy to feed your RCA cables and your remote cable down from the head unit to the floor. You can then tuck them in behind the carpet, and lead them to the small side panel on the passenger side.

Now you can take your main min 8 gauge power cable and connect it to the battery.

Then this cable can be fed down through a hole next to the washer bottle which will bring it out by the inner arch wheel trim. Thread it round the arch, and by the door hinge you will see some foam sound insulation, this can be moved to the side so the cable can be fed through the hinge to the interior.

Now lift up the rubber waterproof trim and feed 3 cables along it, the power cable the RCA cable and the remote cable, and they will now come out by the rear seats.

It is now possible to pass all 3 cables along the side of the back seat so that they come out in the boot.

Now just when you thought you were done you now have to create an Earth cable, this should be as short as possible and taken from the rear. I used one of the 13mm bolts that hold seat belt mounting in. Simple take out bolt connect your earth cable and put bolt back in.

Now the fun bit connect all those cable up to your amp. I am using a active sub, meaning the amp is bulit into the sub box. To test it temporarily reconnect the front head unit and dash and power it up to see if it all works, (remember to turn on your ignition).

It should all now come on. With me it all worked first time, I was very pround of myself.

You can now put the car carefully back together. I did this whole job without a single scratch and no damage to the car at all, the entire system could be taken out without any sign that had been there.

I hope this guide has been of some use. Any questions then please ask.

I am just putting this thread up incase anyone is interested in knowing how to take the head unit out for example fitting a rear sub box which is why I have worked out how to do this.

First of all carefully place flat blade screwdriver under display surround and carefully lever up the clips the secure it down.

This is a picture of the underside so you can aproximate where the clips are

This is view with display surround removed

Then remove the panel below the main unit and above the temperature controls. This is done by carefully placing flat blade screwdriver along the top edge, the cattch that holds it in is located at the middle of the top edge. Lever this very carefully so not the break the catch.

Now to remove the main unit it you have to first undo the four screws at the top of the unit. Two of them are 7mm screws and two of them are torx size T25.Once the bottom panel is out you can then pull the main unit surround out. The catches that hold this in are along the bottom edge. You can pull these straight back, no need for any tools at this stage, the catches are quite stiff but it is only them (after the top screws have been removed) that are holding the unit in. Once you have the main surround out you can easily disconnect the multi-block connector.

View of main unit removed

Next to remove the actual head unit. Without any tools simply pull the head unit out.

As you can see from the image below there is no pre amp out sockets or USB inputs on te rear of the head unit. If you want to fit a sub box you will need to fit an RCA converter something like this LINK

View with head unit out.

To refit reverse the above making sure to carefully line up catches so not to break them.

View with it all back together.

I will be fitting a sub box once I have purchased a RCA converter and I will then put a thread up describing how to do this.

Since I got the car last week I have only used one CD in the player. I mostly listen to the radio. Anyway last night I put I diffrent CD in and was pleasantly suprised to see it told me the name of each track plus the text button gave me the album name.
My question what type of CD or how shall I burn a CD to make it do this all the time? The first CD I used was bought legally from i tunes and burned onto a CD in normal music CD mode. The second CD (the one with all the info on it) was a copy from a CD i actually bought in a shop. So does this mean burning to a CD from i tunes the info will not come up or is the a specific way I can burn the CD's.

Anyway any help would great, assuming managed to understand what I just typed,